Power
by Aunt Ginny Potter
Summary: "Power is the great aphrodisiac." - Henry A. Kissinger


**A\N: This has been lying around my laptop for a really long time… So I figured that (after doing some serious editing) it was worth posting. I'm digging up a lot of stuff that I didn't even know existed, actually… I guess that's what I'm doing now, but it's anyone's guess as to why. :D**

**Anyway, it's here, so it's very pointless to say anything else about it. Go ahead and read the products of my fourteen-year-old work, which (besides the heavy grammar mistakes that have left me red in the face) doesn't seem too bad at first sight. You tell me, when you read and REVIEW (please?)! xP**

**DISCLAIMER: Anything related to Harry Potter (and Harry Potter itself) does not belong to me.**

Dependent on him. That's what they all were.

They looked at him with such awe and reverence, that sometimes, he would allow himself to give into madness and form crazy thoughts of impossible plans, that they would surely carry out, even if unsuccessfully. To imagine ideas that, while obviously foolish and crazy, they would not even blink at. He could tell them to kill themselves, and they would. Just because those were his orders.

Reality snapped back at him, and the task at hand required his attention. Rosier was trembling as he looked down and mumbled what had happened with the foolish boy, at the filthy Muggle establishment. They had nearly got Potter – only to have their memories wiped by him.

Blind rage spilled over his thoughts, and Rosier paid the price. When it was over, he bowed, shaking, ridiculous, nose nearly touching the ground.

_He _did not bow. _He _did not gaze at him, Lord Voldemort, in awe or reverence. _He _would stand, high and proud, defiant of him, regardless of the fate it might bring him.

His gaze fell on the withering, pathetic creature in front of him. _This _was what bowed to him. _This _was what reverenced him, and trained awe-filled glances on him.

His wand whipped again.

Power. That was what mattered, what it was really all about. He had it - a lot of it – and Potter had none. He needed to focus on that.

But he looked at it differently. He spoke of good and evil, as if it were important, as if it decided the winner of a battle between two. It did not. He knew such, because experience had taught him so. Potter was young and reckless, making ill-advised decisions based almost entirely on his concepts of _good_, and impulses.

For that, he would not win. Harry Potter was a pawn, and Lord Voldemort was king.

And yet those who stood alongside Potter were as proud and as idiotic as he was. No one by Potter's side was as _weak_, as _feeble-minded _as those by his.

But that was deliberate. He chose those with an eagerness to follow, with an eagerness to leach power by associating with someone greater than them, so that he needn't worry about morals or principles hindering them when the time came for them to do his bidding.

Yet he found that characteristic highly frustrating and infuriating sometimes. Stupidity was certainly something he never particularly condoned. And he found that those who did not make him feel such frustration were those who had developed optionated intellects over the years of faithful service. Severus Snape, most particularly. He had actual ideas to discuss, actual plans to act on.

That which he valued most, to a certain extent and an extremely narrow range of occasions, in certain Death Eaters, he considered Potter and his allies' downfall.

However, he considered it their downfall for a different reason than the one he valued it on his Death Eaters for. Potter's ideas and plans were based solely on instincts, ideals and recklessness, which, more often than not, meant the plans did not go smoothly; even if he, somehow, managed to correct things so that they went the way he wanted them to. Snape's ideals were reduced to the best way to please his master, and that, combined with a natural cunning and intelligence that came from belonging to the Slytherin House, meant his plans were normally flawless.

And, since Potter's lackeys were as bad as he was in that matter, his plans, whether made by him or them, never went accordingly to what was pre-determined.

Except they weren't really his lackeys, which bothered him, came the sudden thought to his mind.

Rosier was dismissed without a word, and, shoulders slumped, he staggered grotesquely towards the door. He did not, apparently, dwell on the matter of appearing weak to his leader; nor Potter or Voldemort himself would have done that. He knew the boy well enough; backing down in defeat was not something he did.

Potter would have stiffened his shoulders, and walked, head held high, as decidedly as he could, to him, and he would have fought back. He would have lost; but he would have _fought back_. He understood how he thought; it would be a question of pride, even if it resulted in a witless decision. Voldemort too would have left; nose in the air and walking as if he had just been made king of the world. Not that he would ever find himself in a situation like Rosier's.

He leisurely paced around the room, eyes narrowing in their slits. Those who Potter called 'friends' stood by him, even if it meant suffering the same fate he would surely suffer in no time to come. He had seen proof of that, had experienced it first-hand.

Yet those who he had by his own side deserted as soon as they believed that the power he held, the power that he had taken years to harvest, and that would forever be his, had simply disappeared into thin air. It was times like those that he remembered why he valued Snape's intelligence.

But only fools second-guess themselves, and so he did not acknowledge that perhaps he should have chosen the criteria for allowing Death Eaters to join his ranks more carefully.

They were dependent on him for power; and so they fled and hid themselves behind lies that the Ministry gladly swallowed when they came knocking at their doors. He understood that; he would have done the same himself.

Nevertheless, it was still a desertion, and they got the proper punishment for it.

Nagini slithered into the room slowly – he found his anger deflating as contentment filled him at the sight of the snake. He petted its head and whispered to her in parseltongue.

He resented Potter; he admitted that freely – at least to himself. He resented him because he knew Potter had the unheeded and silent support of the Wizarding World, and the passionate back-up of the whole Resistance. Mostly people Potter didn't even know existed, and yet they were there to fight for him.

It irked him – childishly - to know that Potter had all these people as his army, and didn't have to work for it. Maybe some of them were unintelligent, but others weren't. His Death Eaters could fight, he knew; but the people Potter had could give him something equally precious, which would be advice (from those who _were _intelligent), and something a seventeen-year-old leading an army of resistance against Lord Voldemort was in desperate need of. Of all his Death Eaters, the only one who fit that purpose for him was Snape.

But it did not matter, because he made his decisions by himself, and it was better left that way. The options Potter's friends took were based, like the ones by Potter himself, on what was _good_ and what was _evil_.

But Potter was a reckless and shaky leader. He had gone into hiding, and whoever was actively supporting him was either dead, or had gone into hiding too. He was not organizing the Order (any rallying he might have arranged would have to have been done hours ago, and not in some random Muggle laystall, where Potter had been when Rosier found him), and he was not preparing some kind of plan of battle with them. However, he would not allow himself to be fooled; if Potter had disappeared on his own (and he had every reason to believe he did; or if not completely alone, he had a carefully chosen, extremely reduced number of people with him), it had not been out of sheer fear. He was preparing something, Voldemort just did not know what.

In fact, he did not know_ why_ Potter was their leader at all. He was a barely legal boy who had had a protective mother, and nothing else. He had no clue as to why anyone would expect him to defeat him and his Death Eaters.

He stood in front of the mirror, looking himself over. He was Lord Voldemort. He was unbeatable, mighty, and fearless. The red in his eyes diminished as they narrowed again. He would not think about how different Potter and himself were, and he would not compare his supporters with Potter's. Because, no matter what angle he looked at it form, he and his army were better, and that was the reason for which, in a few months' time, the rest would be defeated.

Doing good and doing evil might be very different concepts; but they were also very difficult concepts to define. One shouldn't be bothered considering it; everyone's quest in their lives isn't doing good, nor doing evil, it's gaining power and making name, no matter the methods.

Potter might have some castles in the air about doing good, about the 'right thing to do'. But that would lead him nowhere. In his life, he might have been proud of his achievements – Voldemort sneered – and the 'good' he'd have certainly done, if he weren't dying soon.

But in the end, it didn't matter – it always had been, it always was and it always would be about _power_.


End file.
